Author: Rawles {rawles [dot]marie [at]gmail [dot]com}

Type: Vaguely Het

Genre: Drama

Characters: Mal.

Author’s Notes: I...really don't like this at all. I think my Mal is definitely off and I didn't achieve what I wanted to. While, I have a little thing for Mal/Zoe (Sue me.) I...don't generally believe Mal/Zoe, and I didn't make myself believe it with this fic either.

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Sometimes, late at night, Mal remembered a story he once heard. It was supposedly very, very old and he had no reason to figure differently. He didn’t know all the specifics but its origins were in an ancient culture back on Earth-that-was, one of the ones that had entire crews of gods instead of just one. Anyway, the story went that when those gods created people they made them with two head, four legs, four arms, and so on. Some mischeif followed and the gods got angry with people and smote them. There was a lot of that in those types of stories. This time, however, the smiting caused all the humans to be split in two and scattered across the Earth. So from then on they were like everyone knew them to be; one head, two arms, two legs. Then came the catch. See the gods had forgotten or just didn’t care, Mal didn’t remember which was the case, that their original humans, now in two parts each, only had one soul. So when they were rent into two that soul was split. The end result, you got a planet full of folk who spend their eternity incomplete, until they can somehow come across the other half of their soul.

Now Mal wasn’t one to believe in fairy tales and myths. And he didn’t believe in vengeful gods anymore than he believed in a benevolent one. Mal felt that life had proven to him that He didn’t give a damn about what was going on in the ‘verse. Which is why he’d never forgive Him. But be that as it was, that story always returned to Mal. Because there was times when he was certain that his search had been completed... and he hadn’t taken advantage of that fact.

He didn’t resent Wash,